New "Force Zoom" feature uses pressure-sensitive Pencil to increase CAD precision and speed

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 17, 2016 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- For years, product designers have been anchored to their offices, forced to use a desktop workstation powerful enough to handle the compute-intensive calculations and graphics for 3D solid modeling. Computer-Aided Design (CAD) users who wanted to work on their mobile devices were out of luck; their phones and tablets could only serve as glorified viewers.

Today, however, engineers and designers are free to work wherever they please. Onshape, the first full-cloud professional 3D CAD system to run on mobile devices, has developed its iOS app specifically with iPad Pro and Apple Pencil in mind.

Precision is critical in product design as every 3D model will eventually be manufactured. Onshape's new "Force Zoom" feature takes advantage of the pressure-sensitive Apple Pencil, which can isolate even a single pixel. When CAD users want to select a particular piece of 3D geometry, applying pressure to Pencil will zoom in and enlarge smaller features. The harder they press the screen, the tighter the zoom. Releasing the pressure will restore the screen to its original view.

"A sizeable percentage of our professional customers are heavy mobile users," says Onshape founder and Chairman Jon Hirschtick. "Apple Pencil lends itself beautifully to a two-handed workflow. You can rotate or pan a model with one hand and use Pencil to sketch, select and interact with your 3D models. Onshape and iPad Pro will transform the way engineers work."

"With iPad Pro's portability, tremendous graphics power, and CAD-friendly screen, we almost feel like Apple created this device just for us and our users."

The Onshape for iPhone & iPad App is available for free in the Apple App Store.

Professional Onshape users are also embracing iPad Pro's multitasking features such as Split View, Picture in Picture, and Slide Over - which allow for quickly switching back and forth between apps or websites.

"I really like using Split View with Onshape," says Coleman Fisher, a product development engineer for Elite Ortho, a Tennessee-based orthodontics company. "It's easy to look up specifications from a supplier catalog and work on a model at the same time."

"Onshape's performance on iPad Pro is faster than on my desktop," he adds. "I feel more connected to what I am designing. There's this ethereal block between me and a computer screen versus when I'm holding my iPad and interacting with it with my hands and my fingers - it's a different experience and my creativity just flows better that way."

CAD users interested in learning more about how to design on their iPad or iPhone can visit the Apple App Store and Onshape.com/Learn. To create a free account, sign up in the app or visit Onshape.com/signup.

About Onshape

Onshape is the only company in the world 100% focused on cloud and mobile CAD, offering the first and only professional 3D CAD system that lets everyone on a design team work together using any web browser, phone, or tablet. Breaking away from the traditional model of desktop-installed CAD, Onshape has data management and collaboration built in at its core.

For the first time, the CAD system and CAD data live in one place in the cloud, and are never copied anywhere. Everyone on a design team sees and works on the same master CAD data at all times, avoiding confusing checkouts, file copies, and overwriting each other's work.

Full-cloud Onshape also eliminates the hassles of installations, license codes and servers, service packs, and add-on PDM systems. Every Onshape user always works with the same version of Onshape - the latest version.

Companies worldwide rely on Onshape today to speed up the design of consumer electronics, mechanical machinery, medical devices, machine parts, industrial equipment, and many other products. Onshape's Free Plan also makes it the ideal CAD choice for students and educators to collaborate inside and outside the classroom.

Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Onshape includes key members of the original SolidWorks team plus elite engineers from the cloud, data security and mobile industries. For more information, visit Onshape.com/press-room